


Diving

by Jintian



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Psychic Abilities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1999-08-19
Updated: 1999-08-19
Packaged: 2017-10-29 20:21:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/323811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jintian/pseuds/Jintian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mulder is released from the hospital with a little extrasensory bonus. Post-"Biogenesis" and "Field Trip."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Diving

**Author's Note:**

> This is set in the universe of Maria Nicole's story Bridge. Much gratitude and appreciation to her, not only for letting me do this, but also for writing such a great fic to begin with. It's not necessary to read that to read this story, but I recommend it simply because Bridge is damn good. The entire story is at http://fluky.gossamer.org/display.php?Bridge.Nicole
> 
> Beta thanks to Forte.

As he knows from experience, Dana Scully when she first awakes is fuzzy, the lines and boundaries of her thinking blurred, undefined. But this morning, although he sits miles from her Georgetown bedroom in his room of the psychiatric ward, he can feel the moment she opens her eyes with the precision of a hand flipping on a light switch. Random dream thoughts floating in the formless dark of sleep at one point, and then at the next, the dream-shadows gone and light everywhere, illuminating the shapes of her conscious mind in stark relief.

Inside the white walls of his room the dawn is only a gradual lightening gray, but outside it tumbles from the cradle of the east and streaks the sky in brilliant pink. He sits by the window and listens with half an ear to the faint hospital sounds outside his door. Listens also with the other half -- the inner half -- to Scully as she arises from her bed and gets ready for the day.

Her movements are quick and efficient. Pulling her clothes on and brushing her teeth, fixing coffee and gathering wallet, badge, keys and gun -- with his inner ear he can hear all of her actions as she performs them. And the hearing is different from the usual vibration of his eardrum. This is something that resonates all through his mind, thrumming against its walls in a beat of Scully-induced sense and sound.

Her thoughts, unlike the confused images of sleep, have direction. As she locks her front door and starts down the hall, they are filled only with Mulder, with his release today from the institution. But she does not know he is listening, or that he is even capable of listening.

 _Hurry_ , he thinks into the distance between them. She cannot hear, but the words flash through the landscape of his mind anyway. _Hurry, Scully. Come and take me back, away from here. Take me away._

*

His own thoughts, as he drifted through the endless white hours of the psychiatric ward, had always been directed toward Scully. He had awaited her return from the other side of the ocean with an intensity that eliminated the significance of any other concern.

The day she had gotten him transferred to this facility, she had sat directly in front of him. She had leaned in close, her face filling his vision. "Mulder," she had said, "I'll be gone for a while." Her eyes were round, seeking his blank expression for a response. She swallowed. "I'm going to Africa. I'm going to what I hope is the source of all this."

She was silent for a moment, watching him.

"I know you're in there somewhere, that you understand what I'm saying. Mulder, you predicted something like this might happen one day. That you might become...incapacitated, and I'd need to go somewhere." Another swallow. "I wish you hadn't been so right. But you did tell me to use your father's money if I needed it." Her words were simple. "And I think this is it. I have to find out what's happening to you."

He had wanted to answer, but he could not make his body produce the sounds. There was a chaos of outside minds invading his head. The storm had severed vital connections inside him between thought and voice, and now his body did what it wanted, heedless of his brain. If he could, he would have said, "Wait, Scully. Wait for me, and I'll come with you."

But she hadn't waited, because he had not been able to tell her.

The nurses had sedated him daily. The drugs made everything quiet, dreamy and floating, so that he had nothing to listen to but the seashell echo of his own mind. But just outside of it all he could still sense the thoughts of others, although muted, clamoring to get in.

A realization had swum up out of the blind tranquilized sea. He had been changed, somehow, by the artifact. There was this new ability, still out of control and still dangerous, but the volume had been turned down. And outside his wonder and terror, he realized that he could use it -- he could use the extra level of perception to find her. If he could break through the drug shield and single her out from the chorus of others, he might be able to forge some kind of connection.

They had shared a bond before, after the case with the giant mushroom. They had shared hallucinations and afterwards, flashbacks and dreams as the effects of the chemical wore off. He remembered above all how they had jumped together from a bridge in her dreams, remembered swimming with her through the rainbow of a river underwater. He would be able to recognize that soul, if he found her.

Cocooned in his own head, he had honed his consciousness to stretch, to thin itself down into a lifeline. And he had reached. And reached. Searching without sight or experience, armed only with his fragile mental arm and the undeniable need to connect.

It was his only imperative -- to find her somehow, in the cacophony of mental voices on the other side of the quiet.

Left alone in his room through the infinite crawl of days, he had nothing remaining of Scully without her physical presence. Nothing but memories. He focused on those, used them as guideposts. The minutes of the physical world ticked by with all the slow lumbering of boulders, and he remembered.

Shared flashbacks and images -- Scully at age seven falling from a treehouse into empty air, floating together in the bright sunset sea conjured by her mind. Sense memories -- her face streetlit and moonlit in dim passenger seats during stakeouts, raised eyebrows over case files, tear-streaked cheeks and upturned eyes in hallways. Her voice, logical precision of science or soothing warmth of comfort.

He had not been able to find her until two nights ago. A signal, unmistakable in its familiarity, had surfaced out of the dark churning waters, becoming with each second ever louder and closer. The growing presence of her consciousness drew him up from the deeps, and he had latched on and held to her with all the desperation of a drowning man.

She was coming back. Scully was coming back.

And when she had arrived at the hospital the next morning, straight from the airport and still bone weary from her flight across the Atlantic, he had already been awake, waiting for her.

*

Just as he waits now, sitting by the window. This is a new thing, to be able to glimpse the outside through an aperture that can actually open. Until Scully had returned, he had been kept in a high-security ward. He had only been transferred to a regular room and taken off medication yesterday, mostly through her doctor's credentials and power of will.

Since finding her, even without the muting effect of the drugs, the voices had not returned to their previous volume. They remained little more than a hum, manageable background noise, and dropped even lower the closer he clung to Scully's thoughts.

The horizon now is on fire with the rising sun, and though he has to shield his eyes he keeps his face turned towards the newborn morning --

in his mind's eye he can see the dawn on Scully's hair as she strides to her car

\-- and just then the door to his room opens. An aide steps in balancing a breakfast tray. The image of Scully dissolves and he turns, directing his gaze at the new arrival.

She stops suddenly -- her name is Alice, he knows, although he has never seen her before -- when she spots him sitting in the visitor's chair by the window.

"Oh," she says. "I didn't know you were awake already. I was just going to leave this tray for you."

Alice. She is new, young and still soft in many ways, happy that her shift has just been switched from third, happy also because she thinks Mulder's attractiveness is a nice reward for her last day on the graveyard.

"I'm leaving today," he tells her, tasting the words aloud for the first time. "I'll get breakfast then."

She sets the tray down anyway and checks her watch. "Well, you won't be leaving for a few more hours, right? It's just past six in the morning."

He shakes his head, imminent freedom electrifying his nerves. "No. She's coming to get me. She's coming right now."

Alice smiles, a reflection of morning sun, and in her thoughts he can hear pure, shared happiness. "Whoever she is," Alice says, "she must really want you back home."

"Yes, she does." He returns her smile, and that, too, is freedom. It seems as though until yesterday, there had been an eternity of _not_ smiling.

Alice puts a hand on the door, opens it. "Well, since I won't see you tomorrow, it was nice meeting you."

"Nice meeting you too," he echoes, "Alice."

A look of mild surprise. "How did you know -- ?" Realization as she glances downward. "Oh, my nametag. You must have sharp eyes."

He nods, already turning back to the window, to the bright new day. "You could say that," he says.

*

It is an invasion of her inner self, he knows, to follow Scully with such an intimate closeness, rather than to just catch her thoughts as they radiate outwards. They had tried to confront similar issues of privacy in the aftermath of their mutual flashbacks.

But in this moment there is the raw, dizzying fact that she is here in the psychiatric ward. The excitement of sensing her down the hall, that it is his last day here, that the very last minutes of the last day are ticking into oblivion and are doing so at ten times the speed they have passed in recent weeks -- it is a thunderstorm of anticipation, too strong for him to control himself.

He has learned, connected to her for less than two days, that if he chooses to, he can settle deep in the very front of her consciousness. From there he can observe everything she experiences through her movements, her thoughts, as if it were all happening directly to him. Like now. When he does this with Scully, the world outside falls completely silent. There are only _her_ sounds breaking across the shore of his conscious.

He hears her voice speaking to Alice at the front desk, the timber changed as if he were inside her own skull. Not an unfamiliar sensation -- he had heard it the very first night, because in the thrill of finding her he had burrowed as deep as he was able. He had retreated only when he felt her arrive yesterday at the hospital.

Now as she turns toward his room he slips out again, letting only a faint sense remain. Only a knowing and not an experiencing of her presence, drawing nearer as she walks down the hallway. He stands, straightens his legs and moves around the end of the bed.

She opens the door. Swings it wide when she sees him waiting. Her face has long been burned into his memory, unforgettable even in the temporary ocean of his madness, but he notices something new in the expression. Something that speaks of hope, of the world being turned right side up again.

The sunlight illuminates her brow, but her eyes shine from some inner source. "Mulder," she says, and his name flowing from her smiling lips is like a kiss, a taste of something rich and wondrous.

"Good morning," he answers, and it is.

Behind her smile he can hear, with the volume of a whisper now, her surprise that he is again waiting for her. But she says nothing as she steps further into the room, moving close into his personal space. She tilts her gaze up to him, the way she has on countless other occasions in the countless days they have known each other.

She is holding an athletic bag, which she hands to him. "I had a change of clothes for you in my car. As soon as you get dressed we can leave."

He says, "Those are the best words I've heard all year, I think," and the smile from the exchange with Alice is still there -- a shine of his own radiating out from his body and joining with hers like all the new brightness of the day.

For a second he thinks he might do something wild, swoop down to embrace her, meet those inviting lips with the heat of his own, but instead he raises a gentle hand. Tentative, not quite trembling. Touches her smooth cheek with the tips of his fingers, reveling at the joy of contact that surfaces on her face and -- not such a faint sense anymore -- explodes against his consciousness. Before yesterday it had been an eternity, too, since he had touched her of his own volition.

He savors the moment for a few heartbeats. And then he turns to dress in the bathroom.

*

The diner coffee is hot, burning his lips and tongue, but he gulps it anyway. He loves even that sensation; it's an almost irrational affection. The world is not foreign to him -- he was not in the hospital that long -- but it is like an old, dear friend with whom he must become reacquainted. Scully watches with a small smile, blowing delicately on her own coffee before taking tiny sips.

"So what do you want to do first?" she asks. "We don't have to be back at the office for another week."

He finishes the coffee, setting the cup on the table with a clunk. "Well, let's start with the basics. I'd like to take a long, hot shower, first of all."

"I'll take you to your apartment," she says, but then she makes a hesitant pause, looking down at her coffee. He hears the question in her thoughts before she asks it, like a backwards echo. "And then do you...want me to leave you alone?"

Grinning, "Why? You offering to get in the shower with me?"

She acknowledges the innuendo with an indulgent raised eyebrow and says, "Don't tell me I made a mistake springing you out of there," but she continues on seriously. "I just didn't know if you'd want to be by yourself today."

He opens his mouth, but suddenly he has to shake his head to clear the memories clouding his answer. They are hazy, but undeniably real. Diana leaning over him, unclothed, her expression mysterious in the feverish heat of his bedroom. The dark, pulsing swirls of the world surrounding, suffocating, and he had been unable to move, unable to do anything except moan through the tightness of his throat, "Scully, Scully...."

There have been so many hurts without her there.

"Mulder?" At the sound of her voice her thoughts break through as well, a beacon of liquid light. Worried thoughts, but there, oh, there, washing Diana away and leaving a cool, blessed relief. He hadn't even reached out for Scully consciously, and yet here he is, next to the lovely, cleansing stream of her mind.

"I...I don't want to go back there," he says, "not alone, anyway." He breaks on the last word and shudders, unable to stop himself. He ducks his head down, aware that he is being needy, a trait he knows she detests in herself.

"Mulder." She reaches across the table, covering his hand with her own. Her fingers are small and dry as he turns his palm up and clutches at her. "Okay then. We don't have to go to your place at all. You can come home with me."

He looks at her then, at her eyes so calm and reassuring, not pitying, but empathizing. And oh...all he had wanted in these lost, haunted weeks, left by himself on the wrong side of an ocean, was to fall into her gaze just one more time.

He has to tell her, let her know how he has changed. It is important she understands.

He finds his voice buried in his throat. "Scully...when you were in Africa I..." But he stops before finishing.

Fear of telling her is like a thunderhead boiling in the sky. Because unlike their previous bond, through the flashbacks and the dreams, this connection is not a two-way street. He does not know how she will respond to that. And to reveal something this landmark, beneath the bright impersonal lights of the diner, across the sticky plastic table, would somehow cheapen it.

Instead, he amends the revelation, revising to something smaller but no less personal. Still difficult to say, but the relief of letting the words leave his mouth and the cavern of his chest feels akin to confessing the other truth. And, he knows, it is just as risky.

"When you were in Africa I thought about you. A lot. You were the only hope in that place." His mouth is dry, his throat threatening to close, but he repeats, "The only hope. I mean..." he stammers, "I mean, _my_ only hope, the one good thing I had."

He watches her eyes, where emotions flicker like small lightning, and at the new level senses them imprinting on his brain. Her surprise at the depth of his confession, compassion and sadness, a bit of personal guilt and self-admonition. _Oh, no, Scully,_ he thinks, _not your fault._

And something altogether more volatile and mysterious, threatening to spill like water through a breaking dam. She does not cry, of course; that is not what Scully does. But her hand holding his on the tabletop becomes stronger, her small grip tightening like a lifeline.

*

In the golden haze of late afternoon he sits on an armchair in her living room, watching her nap. She is on her side, cuddled into two-thirds of the couch, face pillowed on her hand. Her mouth is parted just enough for a glimpse of tantalizing pink; the angled curve of her shoulder rises and falls with each steady breath.

They had talked for most of the day. They had talked about what she had found on the Ivory Coast, about Skinner's possible agenda, about the consequences for their work. She had not brought up Diana Fowley, and neither had he.

She has no inkling, he reflects, that his new ability has changed the balance of their interaction. Even with their recent chemically-induced closeness, the hallucinations and all that came after, there have been many secrets between them. Many corners never fully explored or even ventured into. The big secret now is that once again he might know all of _her_ corners, just with a flex of his mind. While she, back on a "normal level," must still navigate a guideless path through his silences.

His sigh disappears into the quiet of her apartment. It does not wake her; she goes on with her even breathing, a rare moment of pause in the life of Dana Scully.

And why _is_ it so hard to tell her the truth sometimes? Without the dreams and flashbacks, there is nothing in their relationship anymore that dictates the sharing of their entire selves -- although at times that has been his deepest and most unexpressed wish. But the new mental imbalance, now that they are again physically side-by-side, makes him feel he is once more hiding something.

The sun in the midst of its afternoon descent casts a golden tint over her body, outlining the lines of her face and sleeping form. Although still fully capable of mystery when awake, Dana Scully when asleep has always been an enthralling, enigmatic realm. Despite the many late-night stakeouts and after-hours work in which he has had a chance to see this phenomenon, he nevertheless takes the opportunity now to study her with all the stealth of the undetected.

And so near to Scully, he can sense her thoughts dancing into dreams, memory melding into reality melding into imagination, and all of it a swirl of confused images, sounds, feelings. He dips in closer, for just a moment, not surprised to find his own face among the fragmented pictures in her head. But then he steps back out again, chastising himself for the wrongness of what he is doing, the violation inherent in it.

*

He does not know, when it comes down to the bottom line, if he believes in fate. At times he has used the word with Scully, referring to questions they might have been destined to ask. But he has never been able to accept, deep down, that the future is already written and pre-determined. That sort of acceptance would be like giving up all hope of ever making a difference in the world.

But what he does know, in the part of himself where more often than not the truth lies buried, is that it was not just chance when she walked into the basement office for the first time. Her entrance into his life had been a piece of some kind of plan, whether made by men only or also by a distant, oft-questioned god, he does not know. But from that moment she had become like some massive celestial body, a star, bending the fabric of his universe all around the space she occupied. Altering the course of anything that came near. And like a celestial body, she had come with her own gravitational pull. He understood that if he got too close, the attractive force would be irresistible.

He had no way of understanding it then, but her entrance had bent his life in a direction he had never believed it might take. If he thinks about it now, it is hard to imagine how he could have been so blind at the time. He had thought he was simply meeting a young woman sent to spy on him, a nuisance with a condescending, disbelieving tone, too ambitious to realize how truly naive she was. She had been eager but innocent. And he'd thought that the X-Files would break her, by showing the errors in her skepticism and logic. She would either become a believer, or she would leave.

But he himself had been too superior, too self-focused, to realize how truly naive he was as well. He'd had no way of knowing what the X-Files might really do to her. Or, for that matter, what it might do to them both. He'd had some idea, but nothing close to the real truth. And now, after more than six years of following him on this quest, she carries just as many ghosts and burdens as he does.

And yes, yes, there is guilt. Guilt that he had not explained to her from the very beginning what he speculated would be the consequences of her commitment. Guilt that in the times of her greatest pain, her greatest changes, he has not done enough to tell her he was sorry.

On the couch she makes a tiny sound in her sleep, almost a sigh, and moves her hand in front of her face. He waits transfixed in the armchair, to see if she will do anything else, perhaps open her eyes and see him there, watching her. But she simply goes on sleeping, her dreams pulsing lightly against his consciousness.

Careful, careful, trying to minimize the noise, he stands. His unshod feet make no sound as he steps toward her. There is only a faint rustle in his clothes as he kneels on the floor near her face. Her hand is still lying there, palm up and fingers half-curled.

He is reluctant to cause a disturbance, to break this moment of peace. But Scully's lure, as always, is irresistible. She is that celestial body, that star, pulling him into orbit around her, a spiral that draws him ever closer.

When his lips touch her palm she makes a small start and opens her eyes -- there, again the sense of her mind coming awake, like breaking the surface of water for air. There is sky in the color of her eyes, sky and ocean, the earth as seen from space. She looks up at him, his face inches from hers.

She makes no physical sound, but her thoughts are myriad, rain droplets splashing on puddles and bouncing in many directions. Too many droplets for him to keep track, except for one bright, sharp wish, clear against the confusion.

And as much to grant that desire -- as much to do that as to finally surrender to the pull of her gravity, he closes the distance to her lips with his own.

And he thinks, _she can't hide this oh god we can't hide we can't hide anymore_

She is a supernova, an explosion swirling all around him.

*

He is the one to stop, though, before the tide of emotion sweeps everything away.

"Wait," he says, cradling the back of her skull with his hand. "We can't do this until you know...until you know everything."

The arousal that colors her thoughts is a whirlpool, and he catches his breath, trying to keep himself from falling back into it. "What do you mean?" she whispers, dragging her lips across his cheek.

"I mean, I'm talking about...." He releases her, shifting away to the side. She is too close; she clouds instead of clarifies. "I mean, the _artifacts_. You still don't know what's happened to me."

Her brow furrows. "Mulder, we can find that out --"

He shakes his head. "No, Scully, _I_ already know." He sits back and settles on the floor, tilting his head to look up at her. She is still half-reclined on the couch, but her face is flushed, like some wild dawning sky.

If he doesn't look at her, or acknowledge the thickness and heat of air between them.... He searches for the words to explain.

"The artifact -- those rubbings, Scully. They changed me somehow. That was why I was so messed up. I couldn't handle it, all of those _voices_."

She blinks. "What do you mean?" Her inner voice is sharp all of a sudden, edged like a razor, cutting through heat and desire.

Talking to his hands, palms turned up in his lap, as if the answers lay written there. "People's _thoughts_ , all of the sounds that go on inside people's heads. I could hear it all, so many of them all at the same time." He shudders. "It was overwhelming, I couldn't think with all of them thinking in _me_."

And now the words are like a fountain, cascading in a turbulent fall.

"And then, when you left, when you left for Africa, I was on so many tranquilizers, and the drugs -- somehow, they made everything quiet. It was like something turned the volume down. And I thought, I remembered when we had those hallucinations, when we dreamed together --" at this she shifts on the couch "-- and I just had to find you, somehow. I knew you would be there, too." He shivers. "God, I looked for you for so long."

Her words are quiet, her thoughts apprehensive, alert. "And...you found me?"

He nods. "I found you, the day you flew back from the Ivory Coast. It was so clear, it was like you were speaking in my head." He looks up at her. "You didn't have any idea I was listening."

"No, no, I didn't." She sits up straight now, feet together on the floor, staring at some point past her knees. "Mulder." She speaks slowly, enunciating the words. "You're telling me you can hear everything I'm thinking. That was how you knew I was coming to the hospital to get you."

"Y-yes." He pulls himself up to kneel beside her, stretching out a hand to her arm. "I think...I think it's like what Gibson could do."

Like in the diner, he hears the thought before she speaks it. "I didn't believe in that," she murmurs. "Not like you believe."

Fear, cold fear like a rush of ice water in his veins at the softness of her tone. He can sense her pulling back, raising her disbelief and skepticism like shields. "But this?" he says, clutching her shoulder. "Scully, you can't deny the link we had before. You can't deny that. This is just as real."

Her eyes are dry and burning. "Mulder, what we had before.... It's not the same." She stops, listening to her words, and he holds his breath. And again, the backwards echo of thought before voice. "This is different. I mean, if you can hear my thoughts...."

"Scully, no, it's not like that. I mean, I can't hear everything. It's like catching, as opposed to...as opposed to digging."

Her eyes on his face are a request for truth.

"Sometimes...sometimes I can hear more," he admits. "If I want, I can go deeper and find things on my own. I can listen on purpose."

She shakes her head, opening her mouth to speak, but he cuts her off, knowing already what she will say.

"Scully, I would never do that without your permission. I mean, shit, I did. I did do that, a few times, I was just so goddamn happy you were back. But never again. I promise."

"If you did it before," she whispers. "We just...we just kissed, Mulder. Are you saying you didn't listen then?"

"Scully, I didn't. I told you, I catch things. Don't you believe me? After all we've been through, now more than ever I'm telling you the truth."

He watches her face, wondering if there are any thoughts beneath the contemplations he can hear. If right now, she is becoming angry, or planning to show him the door, or worse.... But he maintains a safe distance, not probing any further. Instead he waits for some pronouncement from her, whether of punishment or understanding.

Finally, she speaks. "Do you still hear the other voices?"

The question puzzles him, seeming to come out of nowhere, but he should have known that even with the extra perception she would still be able to nonplus him. "No," he tells her. "After I found you, I didn't need the drugs. You made everything quiet, all by yourself. You're the only one I hear now." Still waiting for an axe to fall, he continues. "I told you the truth this morning, Scully. You were the one good thing I had."

She nods then. And there is a brief flare of that same explosive feeling, the tightly packed emotion she had let escape in the diner, in the moment just before he had kissed her lips. And more. Acceptance.

She reaches out in wonder, touches his face, his cheek and brow. Silence as he waits for her to speak. And then, finally. "I believe you," she says.

*

Midnight, and he is lying on her couch in the same place she had napped that afternoon, not on his side but on his back, eyes open. Scully breathes in dreams on the other side of her bedroom door, and he can hear every one of them as they pass. There, that one -- the bridge, an arc over the rainbow river, framing the sunset at the edge of the sea. It is the one they had shared before, the one in which they had jumped together and swum out to the horizon.

 _He is there with her again, ascending the bridge's upward span, two steps of hers for his one. It does not seem that he can be an active participant here, since he is only an observer, and yet everything that happens is just as he would want it._

But then, balancing on the railing beside her, he stops. The water beneath them is dark, not flashing colors at all. The last time, he had been the one urging them to jump, but it is different now. This is something happening only in her mind, yet today more has passed between them than just her thoughts. He _wants_ more.

He could wake her. Lift himself from the couch and go to her bed, bring her out of the dream with words or hands or....

If he woke her again with a kiss, what would she do?

That would be a real life choice, a real life dive, the consequences known and unforgettable. Something that could not be erased in the waking world as just a dream memory. It would be a fall he chose himself, jumping off of a bridge or a cliff no less concrete despite being metaphorical.

And if her choice were the same as his, what would _he_ do?

 _Poised on the railing of the bridge, Scully asks, "Are you ready?"_

He had found her from inside his own drugged mind, because that had been the one thing he had wanted. The one thing, in all the weeks he was drowning alone.

 _"On the count of three, Mulder."_

Dream time is different from real time. In the quiet darkness of her living room, he makes his decision, rising in one fluid, swanlike motion. Swimming through the shadows of the apartment to her room, and the doorknob under his hand is cool, turning like the flow of a current.

 _"One."_

Moonlight casts a pool of silver-tinted luminescence over the bed, and there she lies, curled once more on her side like a sleeping star.

 _"Two."_

In her dream they clasp hands, flexing knees in preparation. And in her room he moves forward, bending to kiss her cheek.

 _"Three."_


End file.
